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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24609466">What the wind brought</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsesinA/pseuds/AsesinA'>AsesinA</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bonanza</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, alternative universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:00:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,173</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24609466</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsesinA/pseuds/AsesinA</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not just his familiy that Adam leaves behind when he leaves Pondarosa. He leaves behind a girl as well. This is the story of how she loved him</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adam Cartwright/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What the wind brought</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She is fifteen when she first meets him, Adam Cartwright of the Pondarosa. He comes to their house a cold, windy day in early December. There is snow on the ground and the sky is blue. He asks to speak to her step-father. They tell him that he died the month before. Her mother invites him in, to get warm before he returns home. He tells them that he lives at the neighbor ranch and that he has been out on an errand on his father's behalf. Her stepbrother doesn't like him. That much is clear from the beginning, but then Hank has never liked anything very much. He ends up staying for three days because of a sudden snowstorm, but she doesn't mind. It's a change from the usual repetition of life. Besides it keeps her brother's hands off her, for a few days if nothing more.</p><p>She has taken to sleep in the stable in stall behind Biter at night. The mare keeps away everyone and that lets her sleep in peace. He finds her there in the morning, curled up in the straw and after she has freed his jacket sleeve from the mare’s teeth she tells him that she has to sleep in the stable or Biter will let herself out to look for her or whatever fun she can find. This is not a lie. Biter has been known to do just that. It is not the truth either. She suspects that he doesn't believe her, but he doesn't comment on it and for that she is grateful. Instead he asks about Biter, about her unusual size and breed and just how clever the mare must be to be able to let herself out. All the while keeping out of the mare's reach.</p><p>He gets in a fight with her brother on the second day of his stay. It is because of her. Because of what her brother said about her. The comment earned her brother a broken nose. In the end her mother has to break them apart and gives them both a whack with the broomstick. That night her brother stays in the house and Adam sleeps in the stall next to hers in the stable. She rides with him to the edge of his father's spread the next day when the snowing finally stops and watches as he rides away with the wind. Her brother hits her when she gets home.</p><p>It is him, whom she rides to in the early spring when her brother tried to touch her again. Biter bit him for it. He whipped her and the mare tried to stamp him as result. That is why she rides her big mare with the bloody flanks to the Pondarosa and asks for help, while her mother tries to save her brother's life. Part of her hopes it fails.</p><p>Adam leaves with his father to go help and she is left in the care of his stepmother and little brothers. The brothers don't look much like each other or him. The oldest is tall and blond and has such a happy smile. He seems to be delighted with the world. The younger looks a bit like his mother, small, with green eyes and brown curls, and a look like he has to prove himself. They help her clean the wounds on Biter's sides. And the mare is on her best behavior and lets them close, but then it is mostly grown men she hates and bites. When they are done they bring her a plate of food and a cup of tea and they all sit on the porch and wait for the men.</p><p>When they return they bring her mother. They do not bring her brother.</p><p>Her mother insists the mare is destroyed, but she refuses. He backs her up, alongside his brother and stepmother. All horses are dangerous if you treat them wrongly he argues. It is first when his father backs them up too that her mother relents, but she never forgives it and refuses to go near it.<br/>
The loss of her brother leaves her to manage their claim. This her mother refuses too, wanting to give up and move back east to her sister. She digs her heels in. There is something special about the land here and she will not leave it, even if she has to stay there alone. She worked the claim as hard as her father and brother. She won't give up now. Her mother stays too. It appears a daughter is too high a price to go home.</p><p>He comes and helps her when he has the time. It isn't often. Sometimes he brings one or both of his brothers too on their ponies. And they help her with the work and when they are done they talk. He tells her about his plans of going to college and the books he likes to read and how he would like to travel the world. She tells him about the power she feels in the land, trees and wind, asks if he feels it to. He doesn't, not really, but believes her anyway. His father feels it to, he says. Sometimes he sings for her.</p><p>Then he comes one evening. Alone. His stepmother has died in an accident and it is her turn to go to them and help. His father is a broken man and he leaves Adam in charge while he travels away at any chance he gets. She can't say she understands, but then grief is never the same in two different people. His brothers are troubled to, mostly the youngest, the one they call little Joe. He has nightmares and keeps the others awake. But slowly things get better. Joe starts sleeping through the night, their father return home and stays and there is no longer any excuse for her to come by once a week or so to help. She still visits once in a while for she enjoys their company, perhaps mostly his.</p><p>A month before he goes away to college she gives him her first kiss. They are out behind the big barn, trying to skip work. He hasn't said anything, but she suspects that it’s his first as well. It isn't very good. The second one, that follows right after, is much better. His hands are on her waist. Hers on his upper arms. His back against the wall of the barn. That's the moment his father and younger brother rounds the corner and catches them. Just as it was getting good. His father gives them both a stern talking to and what's worse; he tells her mother.</p><p>He writes to her while he is away, writes about Boston, the harbor, his grandfather, the people and his classes at collage and more carefully about the girls he meets. She writes to him while he is away, telling him about home, about Biter and the new mare his father helped her buy, about Biter's foal, a colt that's looking to grow just as big as his dame, about her mother's illness. And then she writes to him about her mother's death and how she is going to marry John Haynes. She writes the truth to him. How she doesn't love John Haynes and how he doesn't love her, because he loves men, but needs a wife to keep it secret and he is kind and will let her keep the horses and her home and he won't expect her to share her bed. That's all she wants. In return he warns her to think about it. She knows that she has upset him, but she hasn't seen him in three years and she needs help with the farm. It can't wait forever.</p><p>She marries John Haynes. It's not an unhappy marriage. That is true. They are friends, good friends even, and they work great together. But sometimes when all is quiet she can hear the wind calling and she knows something is missing. She thinks she knows what it is.</p><p>It is a coincidence that she is in town the day he arrives home from college again. She and her husband have to pick up necessities at the store. They usually go the both of them. Biter is their best driving horse, but the mare cannot be trusted alone around strange men. So they need one to watch her, while the other is the store. She is just leaving the store as his farther and brothers pull up in their buggy and on their horses and she stops to say hallo as polite people do, while her husband loads the wagon. The stage pulls up while they are talking and out he steps. And she doesn't know what to do with herself. He's all grown up and handsome. After the first happy reunion with his family, he joins her for at bit and he comes with her to say hallo to her husband. Biter steals his hat. She doesn't bite him. That’s a miracle in itself. When she can't make the mare let go of the hat, he laughs and tells her to let the horse keep it. She ends up buying him a new one.</p><p>It is at his brother's birthday party that she does it. They are alone in the dark outside the house. She needed a bit of air. He is a bit drunk. She supposes that's why he lets her. She isn't drunk, but giddy from the party. She supposes that's why she does it. She gets on her tiptoes and kisses him gently. Not quite on the check. Not quite on the mouth. He doesn't protests and she kisses him on the mouth. He indulges her for a moment and then reminds her that she is married to someone else. She reminds him that her husband won't have her. Not in that way. She doesn't kiss him again. Not that day. He holds her hand.</p><p>She raises her horses and sells them or sometimes just rents them to the timber workers and the farmers. They are more suited for the work than most of the other horses in the area. He works on his father's spread. It is the biggest in the area. They make a fair deal of timber. She helps her husband working their own land. Adam and his father and brothers end up involved one strange happening after another. He tells her about it all. She still loves him. She doesn't tell him. Sometimes he courts other women, but sooner or later he would sit in her kitchen again.</p><p>Then one evening he comes by. He is upset. That is clear to all. Her husband leaves them alone. She sits him down on a kitchen chair. He tells her that he came by to say goodbye, didn't plan to stop for long, but his horse made a wrong step and now it is lame. He is leaving. Leaving for good. She asks why. He had had another fight with his brother and with his father and now it is enough. He won't stay another day. She asks where he will go. He says to see the world. She convinces him to stay the night, convinced herself that he will go back home the next morning. He always does. They are that kind of family. He stays the night. He shares her bed.</p><p>He is gone when she wakes. The house is empty. He is nowhere to be found. There's a note on the kitchen table. Her heart sinks as she reads it. He has left for somewhere unknown. His own horse was lame, so he has taken one of hers and promises to have it returned. He writes that he is sorry to do this, but she would either have stopped him or come with him. He couldn't ask her to give up her life, her home and her husband, for him and the uncertainty and with those words he leaves her life, like blown away by the wind.</p><p>Her husband finds her crying in the stable, as he returns a little later from a night spend at his own lover’s place. She is feeding the horses as she does every morning. Because life goes on even after heartbreaks and the horses must be fed. It doesn't stop her from crying and telling her husband the whole damn thing and John hugs her and pats her hair and tells her it will be alright in the end. She knows it will. He will return one day, but right now she is alone.</p><p>It is high noon when his brother comes around. The youngest and smallest of them. Never getting of his horse he stops in front of their house. Asks if they have seen his brother. She asks what happened and listens to the story and nods. There had been a fight between them and with their father. One of many and it had been enough. She says she doesn't know where he is. It is true after all. She doesn’t say that he was there. The young man on the horse nods and looks so young and lost. Almost like a child again. And that is what makes her speak up. As the young man turns his horse to leave she calls. "Joe, if you find him. Tell him to keep the horse." He looks surprised and she tells him the rest. Tells him that his brother came by last night, upset and in a hurry to say goodbye and that his horse had gone lame. So he had stayed the night and been gone before daybreak. She promises to bring the horse he left with her home to their ranch.</p><p>Later the young man comes back alone. "He said he has to do this" She doesn't ask anything else. The wind blew him away. The wind will bring him back. She expects it to be soon. </p><p>Weeks later she tells her husband that she is expecting a child. John doesn't say anything, doesn't ask, but they both know the child isn't his. They both know whose it is. They both pray it will look like her. It will be easier that way. Easier for the child, if nobody else.</p><p>He hires Charlie Engal as a farmhand. She knows the truth. She catches them kiss within three days.</p><p>She cries when her child is born. The few strands of hair on her daughter's head are black as raven wings. And she knows that everyone will know. And she knows what it will mean for her daughter. He has still not returned home. </p><p>John comes to sit at her bedside. He won't hold the child. Refuses to call it his own. Refuses to be named its father. It is too obvious that he isn't, not when he is as blond as she is. He won't be the laughingstock of the town. Not more that he already is. Reluctantly he lets her give her daughter his last name. A child must have name and so it must be his for she is his wife and that is the way things are done. And she sits with her daughter in her arms and cannot remember if they ever have done things the way things are done. They don't speak about him.</p><p>She names the girl Maria and pronounces in a way similar to the word rye. In the years to come she will say when asked that it is because they were harvesting rye in the fields at time of the birth. This is true. But she doesn't tell them about the song he used to sing to her about the wind called Maria, said just like that.<br/>
She knows the wind will return him to her. She prays it will be soon.</p><p>A week after the birth his brothers come by. Both of them. They come by often enough; sometimes they even bring their father, though that’s more rarely, so it isn't weird that they drop by. This time it's just the two of them. They have some weak excuse of checking if John needs help with the harvest. Say they finish theirs yesterday, but she knows they want to see the baby. And her suspicions are confirmed when they come in for lunch and the first thing the oldest of the brothers asks is to see her.</p><p>Her baby girl looks so small in his big hands, but he holds her gently and coos to her. A finger carefully stroking the black hair. He falls silent and looks up at her. She can see in his eyes how he realizes the truth. He calls his brother.<br/>
"What is it Hoss?" Joe says when he comes, looking over his brother's shoulder, smiling when he sees the baby. Who wouldn't? "Look at her" says Hoss. "Who does she remind you of?"<br/>
Joe's smile falls. "Adam" he mumbles and he looks at her too. A question on his face. She doesn't say anything. She never will. She doesn't have too and with that her daughter's uncles truly become a part of their life. She couldn't keep them out if she tried. However she asks that they don't tell their father. Not yet.</p><p>When her daughter is three years old her husband comes home with a small wound on the back of one leg. It becomes infected and within a week he is dead. They bury him a raining morning. Friends and neighbors around them. Charlie Engal, her husband’s lover, is there too, through nobody, but she knows that that is what he was. She gives his arm a squish as they stand on the end of the grave looking down at the coffin. She wished she could have loved her husband like a wife ought to, but she never did. He didn't love her either. Love was never a part of their agreement. She gave him a cover; he made it possible for her to keep her land and horses. Still she wishes she could have loved him or that he could have loved Charlie openly. It is too late now.</p><p>From a bit further away her daughter's uncles and their father watches them hats in their hands. They come to pay their condolences and the old man's eyes linger on Maria. On her hair and eyes. It is remarkable how much they look like each other.</p><p>He sits in her kitchen the next day. Came by to lend a horse to move some timber. Her horses are stronger, more suited, than his. So it is not unusual request in itself. It is unusual that it is him who comes. Usually it is one of his boys. But now he is here, playing with Maria. This is unusual too. She is making him coffee. It seems to her that she is always making the Cartwrights coffee.<br/>
She has always admired Ben Cartwright, even if she doesn't always agree with him. She suspects that's why she hasn't told him about her and his son. About Maria. She wouldn't be able to stand his disappointment.<br/>
She is reaching for the cups in the cupboard when he says: "Your daughter looks very much like her father". She fumbles the cup and it drops and smashes on the floor. He comes to help her pick up the pieces. Maria is still playing with her doll at the table, not listening to them. "What did they say?" She asks and gets the broom. Trying to pretend it is nothing. Ben nods. He tells her how he had remarked on Maria's dark hair over dinner yesterday, and how he had had to hustle the truth out of his boys after seeing their reaction. Then seeing her face, he places a hand on her shoulder and assures her that she could have told him, but that he understands and if she can excuse him, he will return to his granddaughter.</p><p>Maria asks about her father one day. Her daughter’s question leaves her at a loss of words. She doesn't know what to tell her. In the end she tells her the small things. How he had black hair like his daughter, how he sang for her, tells her the story of how Biter stole his hat. She doesn't say much else. In the end it is her grandfather who tells her the entire truth. That her father is his son and that he left before she was born.</p><p>A few years later they bury Hoss Cartwright in the cold ground next to his father's third wife. It surprises her. Part of her supposed they were immortal, the Cartwrights. Like the land below them and the wind around them. And now Hoss has left a hole in the middle of it all. Maria is crying about the loss of her uncle. Joe is telling her stories of his brother, trying to keep the truth away. They all know it anyway. She will never forget the look on Ben's face as they brought home his son, laid flat in the back of a wagon. He has lost another son and this one will not return.</p><p>And then just short of the ten year day of her daughter's birth, they ride into her yard. It is early morning and the birds are singing when they come; Ben and Joe, with smiles on their faces. There is a third man with them. She recognizes the horse before she recognizes him. A grey gelding she last saw ten years ago and then she realizes. It is him. The bucket she was holding falls from her hands and the milk spills on the ground. He comes to her, hat in hand. "Good morning, Emmeline" he says and she doesn't know if she should laugh or cry, for he is here. In the end she does neither. She just stands there. His father pats his back and tells them they have a lot to talk about and why don't him and Joe go help with the animals and make breakfast while they talk.</p><p>He tells her he is sorry about her husband. She tells him she is sorry about his brother and asks him where he had been the last ten years. Where ever the wind took him, he explains and then he says "They told me you had a daughter.” She nods. "Her name is Maria" and then she tells him the thing she never said out loud before. That he is her daughter's father. He looks lost and confused at the news. She goes to find his father.</p><p>In the kitchen Joe and Maria are cooking breakfast. He is telling her stories of his brothers while they work and she adds some of her own. They have just finished setting the table when he enters with his father. Ben presents him to Maria as his son. The girl looks at him and asks if it means he is her uncle too. He says no and tells her that he is her father and that he is sorry that he has been gone, but he didn't know and if she wants it he will stay. Maria asks what he will do if she doesn't. He smiles, and Ben tells her he will work for him and keep out of business. And he adds that she doesn't have to make up her mind at the moment. </p><p>In the end her daughter allows him to stay. For the day at least.  He sings to her about the wind called Maria.</p><p>It is strange that he is back. She prayed that he would return and now he has and she doesn’t know what to do. In some ways it is like he has never been gone at all, but so much have changed. It has been ten years and much has happen. She has a daughter now. They have a daughter now, she realizes. This is strange too. He comes by to see them, every other day or so. He is a good father. They talk and they laugh and they smile like they used to do before he left. Much has changed. He is still in the man she knew. She still loves him.   </p><p>He is dusty and sweaty and has spent an afternoon ignoring the fact that she can fix her own porch when he asks her to marry him. She tells him yes, but only if he can live with being third after her daughter and her horses. He laughs at that and tells her he might just be able to do that. If she can live with being one of two girls in his life, that is. She might just be able to.</p><p>She marries him, Adam Cartwright of the Pondarosa. It is a happy marriage. Though, to Maria's dismay she doesn't get any younger siblings.<br/>
She is seventy-four when she sees him the last time. She tells him good night and falls asleep</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This was inspired by the song "They call the wind Maria", in the version by Pernell Roberts</p></blockquote></div></div>
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